Rush Limbaugh's $1,000,000 bet

I was reminded today about this . . . . Do you recall Rush Limbaugh's offer to bet $1 million that President Bill Clinton's 1994 tax increases would plunge the country into a recession? Didn't happen.

Is it about the oil??

Victor Davis Hansen writes ". . . . Yet it's the anger over the tiny West Bank that in the past caused the Arab patrons of the Palestinians to embargo oil to the West and create long gas lines in Europe and America. As a result, a single suicide bomber from Jericho earns more press than anonymous thousands slaughtered in Darfur."


read more here

Pirated Music

According to BigChampagne, one billion songs a month are traded on illegal file-sharing networks.

A different view of our friends in Iraq . . .

George Packer has written an great piece in the New Yorker Magazine, here is an excerpt . . .

Whenever I asked Iraqis what kind of government they had wanted to replace Saddam’s regime, I got the same answer: they had never given it any thought. They just assumed that the Americans would bring the right people, and the country would blossom with freedom, prosperity, consumer goods, travel opportunities. In this, they mirrored the wishful thinking of American officials and neoconservative intellectuals who failed to plan for trouble . . . . . . . Although Iraqi employees had been vetted with background checks and took regular lie-detector tests, a permanent shadow of suspicion lay over them because they lived outside the Green Zone. Firas once attended a briefing at which the regional security officer told newly arrived Americans that no Iraqi could be trusted. The reminders were constant. Iraqi staff members were not allowed into the gym or the food court near the Embassy. Banned from the military PX, they had to ask an American supervisor to buy them a pair of sunglasses or underwear. These petty humiliations were compounded by security officers who easily crossed the line between vigilance and bullying.

a warning of sorts . . . this is a long article but worth the read
click here to read the rest of the article

Mortgage Fraud

The Treasury Department received a record 37,313 mortgage fraud reports in 2006, 10 times more than in 2000. But the true incidence is almost certainly higher because the government gets reports only from regulated institutions, not including the nation's 53,000 mortgage-broker firms.

What's wrong at Ford???

A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (General Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.
Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the “Rowing Team Quality First Program” with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was a discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.
The next year, the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India .
Sadly, The End

Sad, but oh so true! Here’s something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US, claiming they can’t make money paying American wages. Toyota has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter’s results: Toyota makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses. Ford folks are still scratching their heads.

and in a story this morning 4/6/07, Ford announced they paid the new CEO $28.18 million in his 1st 4 months on the job, they also paid $8.67 million for a few months work who to another who retired in July as COO